On Sunday night, NBC aired the film National Treasure featuring Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel and a whole bunch of very competent actors I couldn’t point out in a crowd if my life depended upon it. And for the life of me, I wish I could remember the name of the blonde. Especially during the shopping mall dressing room scene. Hubba hubba.
On one hand, National Treasure was perhaps the most blatant product-placement fiesta ever offered in the history of Hollywood to the fraternal organizations known as The (Free)Masons and/or the Knights Templar. This is amazing because these organizations have long been rumored to be the secret force behind the aliens of Area 51 and Every Single Goddamned Reason Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You, Even When You Don’t Come Home Really Fucked Up. But some awfully strange shit is rumored to happen with the Masons, especially if they’re wearing matching pinkie rings. So who am I to argue?
But still, on one hand, National Treasure was bitchin’ good for the Masons. On the other hand, it was even better for Harvey Keitel. He’s one my my favorite modern-day actors and, believe me, if a guy like that can manage to land a mainstream role after doing some seriously dark business in The Bad Lieutenant, there will always be hope for those among us looking to score at a dive-ass bar that only charges 85 cents for drafts and $1.95 for mixed drinks.
On the other hand, National Treasure got me thinking about the upcoming national election. Granted, 20 bucks worth of hooch poured into a crowd of Limey blokes otherwise subservient to the crown might get them thinking they could start their own country under their own rules, goddamit. Hell, at prices 250 years ago, 20 bucks might have been good enough to get a whole village of pubcrawlers to dress up like the Village People and dump a whole fucking boatload of tea into a harbor.
History’s funny that way, y’know. Stranger things have happened on a Friday night in my local dive bar on five stinkin’ bucks.
But I digress. National Treasure introduced us to the historical idea that, in the name of The Revolution or something major leading up to it, Ben Franklin wrote some extremely seditious letters to his brother’s newspaper under the guise of some old biddy named Silence Dogood. Mr. Franklin might have been aces in predicting the tides 300 years later, but even drunk out of my gourd I can spot a name as phony as fucking Silence Dogood. But apparently, the British are nowhere as good as Americans or the Irish in getting fucked up and spotting blatantly obvious pen names. According to National Treasure, the Silence Dogood letters weren’t quite “give me liberty or give me death,” but it was close enough for Nicolas Cage to be involved in a big-ass action/suspense movie, especially given the amount of lighting-grade gunpowder used in the last 20 minutes.
Yes, unlocking a massive $300 trillion-bazillion-godzillion treasure the entire history of mankind has ever known using nothing more than a Meeschaum pipe was a massive stretch far beyond the mortal powers of MacGyver. And yes, it was still and all good for one more Nic Cage movie that, if I recall right, settled once and for all the debate over the Lincoln-Kennedy/Kennedy-Lincoln penny thing. But that’s neither here nor there, because Sunday night’s airing of National Treasure got me thinking about which of our own presidential candidates in the November election might actually sacrifice their neck for the presidency, let alone their country.
Drunk or not, the debate was not good. Granted, the opposition was not exactly what anyone might consider a contender, but still.
I come from a long line of South Shore Democrats, but truth be told, I left the melee feeling good for neither candidate whatsoever. Unless someone steps up balls-to-the-wall within the next eight weeks and provides this country with some true fucking hope for America that it can believe in, we might as might as well all be stacked 16-deep in the hold of a slaver ship back to Europe or Africa.
Because come November 4, we’re all fucked no matter which way we vote. Plain and simple.
Why? Because the “hope” that our candidates speak of for America rings so very hollow. Hope for America? Screw you, Barack Obama. Screw you too, John McCain. Your words ring empty, written and spoken not by you, but manufactured by the speechwriters who go to the highest bidder. Your vision of the America to be is not yours. It’s someone else’s. It’s the figment of the imagination of someone simply feeding a nation hungry for the hope of something better.
It’s the figment of the imagination of someone simply and mindlessly feeding the lions at Brookfield Zoo or the guy down the street tossing grass seed around so his sod won’t completely die in the noonday sun.
Guess what, Barack Obama and John McCain? I don’t believe a word you say. Ben Franklin may have been one helluva writer in his day, but why do I think if you stood side by side, almost 250 years ago, Ben would kick your ass – and in his own words – up and down Philadelphia’s main drag? You are manufactured. You are staged. You tell us what you think we want to hear. Yes, during your speeches, you may believe you are feeding us hope. But in the absence of who or what is truly you, who will I rely on to lead me or my neighbor – if it came down to that – in war to the point that I would even think of killing my neighbor, my brother, or even own my son in the same sort of conflict that tore our own nation apart almost 150 year ago?
I haven’t a single clue. But right now, I know it’s neither of you. If I am left with nothing but myself or my neighbor to rely upon – and if my neighbor actually turns out to be my enemy, I will still feel more comfortable in the hands of my enemy because at least I will have seen truth in their eyes.
I have not seen that same truth in yours.
I am 48 years old. I am a child of the early 1960s. In my time, I’ve seen hope realized and hope extinguished in both the spring and summer of 1968. That year, I saw Chicago’s West Side burn and, beyond that, I saw America lose trust in its leaders it believed in for so long, a trust that even now may never be held again. Some . . . no, many . . . who not only lived through those times, but then came far afterward . . . .may believe that you project the hope we all have to erase all this, to make your election everything America ever wanted.
This is what I want for America, from both of you. I ask only one thing, one promise, which goes beyond your words this and last week: Make me believe in an America I can believe in again, and show me how you to plan to do it. Words are cheap, and they are usually purchased from someone else on your behalf. So let me see it in your eyes, and your actions, and from here on today that you understand and are willing to step up to fight for the legacy – be she contrived by a movie or not – of Silence Dogood.
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See what else we’ve been watching! Submissions welcome.
Posted on September 2, 2008